The aim of these comments is to focus attention on the process through which dead grandmothers, horsehides or runts of the litter (see H.C. Andersen's "Little Claus and Big Claus" and E.B.White's Charlotte's Web) acquire special significance, and to outline the issues that emerge from such a process.

     Little Claus' horse is dead. His grandmother has just died. What is he to do about his dead horse? About his dead grandmother? In the barnyard, a litter of pigs is born. One is a runt. What should the farmer do about the runt?

     The value of these items, in the "presented world," is slight. What value are we talking about? We know that as commodities dead grandmothers, horses, and live runts don't have much market or exchange value. True, pigs can be eaten, horsehides can be used to cover sofas, and grandmothers may have wills. Withint the normal expectations of everyday life, the horizon of value for these items is quite limited.

     Until they become part of a story. What we read leads us to recognize that each item may be worth much more than we expected. Given the right opportunity and the right speech, a single person can turn each of these into large profits. How does Little Claus do it? What makes Wilbur the runt so special after all?

     None of these items can, by their own striving, arrive at a privileged position. It takes an imaginative someone else to create a space in which the dead grandmother, the dead horse and Wilbur can become special. That "space" is largely linguistic; words make the difference. To turn a mute object into an urgent message is to confer the value of a sign upon it.

     Merely talking about the dead grandmother or the dead horse or about a runt pig (as Fern does) is not enough. The message about these figures must be seen to be of great benefit for those to whom the message is addressed. The innkeeper and the farmer must both see that what is being said about the dead grandmother or the horsehide is intended to benefit them in some way. The owners of Wilbur must believe that the messages that surface above Wilbur's head are working directly to their benefit. From this, we may derive two further hypotheses: That the message is bestowed by someone, and the bestower or sender of the message "means well." The message, in other words, not only confers the value of a sign upon the mute object, dead grandmother, horsehide or pig, but upon the sender; it bestows an aura of "wellmeaningness," of "good intent." Little Claus is doing the innkeeper, the farmer and even Big Claus a favor; Charlotte is doing the Zuckermans a favor, tipping them off about Wilbur's specialness.

    Let us construct a set of symbols to represent the relationships among these different factors.

x= nearly zero value of the item
X= enchanced "story" or "sign" value of the item

 s= sender
S= sender identified with good intentions for object and receiver

 r= receiver
R= Receiver who assumes good intentions of sender

 y= bushels of money

 If a dead grandmother or x presented by a well-iontentioned sender (S) as a distinguished value (X) to a much benefitted receiver (R) then we might say that

 s + x(SXR)

where (SXR) is the supercharged sign made out of the weakened, nearly empty object, and s is simply the present owener, an ordinary person, who desires to sell an object. This supercharged commodity is in a relation to another valued object, namely money or gold. But the value of the gold is assured by a convention, not by its sender or receiver. The relation of dead grandmother to gold may be written as

s + x (SXR)-r+ y

 The (SRX) relation is essential in this equation, as it assures the simple "r" or actual recipient that Little Claus means well to him, and that the trade of y for x is more than fair. The innkeeper and farmer have cash, but they still have not taken control of the hot item, now become an urgent message. Then a simple exchange takes place:

 s + y= r+ x (SXR)

 Now Little Claus has the money, and the farmer has the horsehide and the innkeeper has control of the secret of the dead grandmother, Wilbur is safe, and the Zuckermans enjoy a lot of favorable publicity. But the equation on which the exchange is based is, as anyone can see, quite spurious. HCR: here comes the reader.

 We recognize the SXR relation as a contrivance, an illusion, an element of story. We see the sender, in the case of Little Claus, as working only for his own cause, not out of respect for his grandmother or for the innkeeper's services. The receiver is the universal dupe. But the receiver is duped not only by the particular message but by the conventions within which the message takes on meaning. The innkeeper assumes the convention of respect for the elderly. The farmer assumes the convention of respect for the host. The Zuckermans assume the convention of the truth of animal speech. Each of these assumptions is basically wrong. Now the reader is implicated.

 The relation s + x(SXR) is valid only within a set of conventions to which we more or less adhere. The episodes we have examined provide a test of these conventions. The "successful" characters (Little Claus in two, Charlotte in one) borrow from the conventions, but do not serve them. What they do is to lead us, the readers, to question not so much the meaning and value of the ruse, the preposterous transformation of pig into superstar, but the very meaning and value of the conventions within which such a ruse can plausibly occur.